Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Corganwatch: Organ Versus Lov

Billy Corgan and Courtney Love, seen here with a classy dude who knows when to shut his fucking mouth.

The other night I was explaining to my girlfriend that I'd once been bored enough to watch a movie called Reddy Versus Jaso on my dad's cable. (This first entailed explaining that this was in the days when plenty of people thought nothing of watching widescreen movies on square televisions, though the pan-and-scan process did horrible things to any sequence in which two figures were stood at either side of the screen, ie the defining shot of most Character Versus Character movies; to say nothing of what it does to the title sequences of said movies.)

A common problem with movies like Reddy Versus Jaso (or, for that matter, Lie Ersu Retado, but presumably not Amer Versus Kram) is that they present two equally repellent figures, both legendary and in their way commanding of awe, but both quite categorically To Be Stayed Away From; but due to the demands of narrative storytelling, both figures cannot be consistently vilified in equal measure, so the movie's drama invariably boils down to the protagonists (who are, disappointingly, never Reddy, Jaso, Lie or Redato but just boring old creatures of the Uman Bein variety) having to choose between the lesser of two evils. Which is a boring thing to make a story about!

Which is why it's actually quite boring that Billy Corgan has despoiled yet another modern invention by using Twitter to go off at Courtney Love.

Because being the protagonist of the line, "she eyes me like a Pisces when I am weak" is sort of classy; WHEREAS using Twitter to say to no-one in particular, "maybe you should go someone nice+live off your husband’s money, u know the money he made for writing all those great songs" is sort of tacky. Sort of!

And yes, lines like "Born of the airs and dues, my airs of madness do declare/That it's ok, it's love" paint an intriguingly oblique picture of a hapless victim of destructive love (Study question: Whose? Points for answering Study Question: 0); WHEREAS tweets like "if you can’t write your own songs maybe you should just be happy that you fooled someone into doing your work for you" just make a fellow want to point out that the username "@selfimportantchump" actually isn't taken yet.

And, for that matter! Performing extended half-hour live versions of Silverfuck dedicated to Courtney Love in which one descends into endless chants of "THAT FUCKING WHORE THAT FUCKING WHORE THAT FUCKING WHORE" is sort of artistic, maybe; WHEREAS using Twitter to tell NOBODY IN PARTICULAR things like "the world is aware of your lack of responsibility, as seen in the gov’t taking away your parental right. Only you could abandon such a beautiful, incredible child who is smarter than u, cooler than u, and better than u. Oops, did I say too much?" is just uncomfortable.

While hating on Courtney Love is still the #1 way for the closeted misogynists of the Grunge Era to vent their cunt-despising fury without anyone calling them on it, she is probably the Jaso or Redato of this equation, if only for the facts that (1) it's called a fucking @reply, it's what separates the general-broadcast message from the asshole-a-rific passive-aggressive snipe; and (2) Nobody's Daughter is pretty fucking great, whereas Teargarden by Kaleidyscope Vol. 1: Songs for a Sailor HOLY FUCK WHAT A TERRIBLE.